Break Of The Day
by GideonGraystairs
Summary: Will feels like he really is burning, like Jem's name is singed across his heart and soon it'll be all he has left of him. He feels like he needs to hold onto this while he has it because Jem's never getting out and Will can't stay here forever, but he tells himself to ignore it. He's with him now, here, and that has to be enough.


**I've been filling out the requests for a ship + song or lyrics style prompting (as well as finishing the ones from the ship + line of dialogue one) on Tumblr and have decided to post these ones here as well. Enjoy :***

 **Requested by Anonymous: heronstairs + sex on fire by kings of leon**

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 **.:Break Of The Day**

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 _Lay where you're laying  
Don't make a sound  
I know they're watching  
They're watching  
_

* * *

His hands brush the curtains back with shaking agitation, white blinds shuttering under his gentle touch. He breathes, deep and heavy, and the world at his fingertips sighs right along with him, the children on the street below pausing in their play for the briefest of moments. Leaning slowly against the cloudy window that sits as a barrier between him and the vibrancy of life, he tries to imagine himself there, below, rather than up here on his own restricted planet.

The room he's in is shades of white and grey, a cream-coloured bedspread and a dull silver endtable. It's the kind of room that aught to have been sterile and cold, but instead gives off an aura of unkempt and bleak, though it may have once held some modicum of warmth. There's a lamp in the corner that flickers in intervals of three, a crack in the tile right by the door. And there, in the corner, just above the fitful light, is a black globe with a blinking red light.

They're watching him. They always are.

Below, the world has shifted. The children are gone, the sky sliding across the scale of saturation to a dulling grey, and a stray dog has settled under the awning of a closed shop for the night. People pass by, dressed in either suits or hoodies but all with somewhere to go, none paying the shivering animal any mind. This is a good thing, he thinks when he can feel enough to care. It means none are being cruel to it, tossing it aside, calling the pound to take it away and lock it in a cage for the rest of its life.

 _Don't move_ , he tells the dog with his mind. _They'll get you for sure if you move._

"Jem?" a voice interrupts, this time a life on the same world as him. He stares at the dog for a minute longer, sighing out his apologies to it for having to turn away, and then lets the curtains fall shut as he does.

The man before him wears a weary expression, the door at his back sliding shut with a creak and a click. He looks as he always does; kind, healthy, safe, beautiful.

Jem likes beautiful things.

"I brought you your medicine," he says, stepping forward on standard white sneakers. He looks almost sad, or maybe it's worried, but that'd be hardly unusual in a place such as this. It's when he reaches out, white paper cup with two pristine pills and a bottle half-full of water in hand, that his eyes turn into wild blue hurricanes coming to destroy the world.

Jem doesn't like medicine.

"Jem," he impeaches again, his voice soft and sweet as he rests his free hand on the other boy's shoulder. " _Please_. For me?"

And, well, he doesn't know how to argue with that so he grabs up the pills and swallows them dry, batting away the water before stepping forward to latch his arms around the hurricane. Only, it isn't a hurricane anymore. It's the sky on the other side of the window just earlier today and maybe tomorrow, too. "For you, Will," he affirms, lips brushing against the soft skin of the man's neck.

He feels it when Will breathes, a relieved sound accompanied by the feel of a face burying in his hair and arms sliding around his back. "I'll get you out of here soon," he hears, a whisper on the air that's been pushed away from the space between them. "Then we can be together for real."

Jem pauses, tastes the sun on his skin, furrows his brows together and licks at his lips. "Haven't we already?"

Will's laugh is like the rain pittering against his window. "That's not what I meant," he tries, but he must know from the thickness of their oxygen that Jem doesn't get it. "More than that, Jem. We can go out or stay in, spend time together whenever we want, however we want. I can-"

And he pauses, because he knows this is the one promise he could never make lightly.

"I can show the world outside the institute, Jem."

The thin boy in his arms smiles a wistful grin, dull grey eyes sparking to brilliant silver. He breathes, in and out, and his grip on the other man loosens in his joy as the world shifts from grey and white to smoke and snow. _The world outside, the world outside, **the world outside**._

"I'd like that, yeah."

* * *

 _Soft lips are open  
Them knuckles are pale  
Feels like you're dying  
You're dying_

* * *

Will purses his lips, biting back the curses and the tears he can feel crushing over him like an avalanche. He reads it again, eyes skitting over _Carstairs, Jem - aged 21_ and straight to _Condition on Discharge: Patient must show signs of expected response to prescribed medication and reliability in continuing to take them, as well as have a support system in place and no longer shows signs of potential harm to others. Patient describes being watched, as well as an inability to classify emotions and must not be discharged before this is regulated. Will not be discharged if patient still proves hostile to any staff._

He tries to take a deep breath, he does, but the air feels too thin and his heart feels like lead and all he can think is that he **promised,** but Jem's probably going to spend the rest of his life in that ugly grey room, kept under lock and key and careful supervision and _he's going to die in there_. He's going to die without ever being allowed to see the world on the other side of that stupid window he's so obsessed with.

Because as much as Will loves him and sees only the best of him, he's not dumb enough to think Jem could ever meet those goddamned conditions. He's always going to hate his meds. He's always going to think there's a camera in the corner of his room. He's always going to find trouble distinguishing before sadness and guilt, happiness and nerves. He's always going to think the worst of everyone but Will. **He's always going to be Jem**.

And that? That's the most painful thing Will has ever had to come to terms with.

But he can't tell him that because Jem is Jem and Will is Will and the world is a terrible place he should keep dreaming about to stay any modicum of sane. So instead, he tucks the file right back into the cabinet and grabs his keys, taking the stairs up to Jem's floor.

His lover is at the window again when he enters, staring like he can see something through it that Will can't. He's grateful the sickly man doesn't turn around when he enters, it means he doesn't have to see the way Will's smile is like a sob or the way his eyes are like the dulling grey of the sky.

His arms slide around his waist easily, Jem letting out a contented hum as he falls back into them. It isn't until Will starts to kiss his neck, desperate and needy as he slides his hands under the hospital issue t-shirt he's wearing that Jem seems to get the hint and turns around to lock their lips together.

They move to the bed as easily as they share their breaths, the world of grey and white and smoke and snow and files and dogs falling away as they're each consumed entirely by the other. They shift in sync, like a harmony of voices rising to the beat, and melt together in the fire of them as one.

Will feels like he really is burning, like Jem's name is singed across his heart and soon it'll be all he has left of him. He feels like he needs to hold onto this while he has it because Jem's never getting out and Will can't stay here forever, but he tells himself to ignore it. He's with him now, here, and that has to be enough.

It has to, because he can never have any more than that.

* * *

 _But it's not forever  
But it's just tonight  
Oh we're still the greatest  
The greatest  
The greatest_

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 **Did I mention the 146 Things To Do Besides Self-Harm collection I started on tumblr? Go check it out at /tagged/146things on either my main blog (gideongraystairs) or my writing blog (taitewrites). Love you all *insert heart***


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